Street Play: Going Inner City

The influx of Stella McCartney-clad hipsters in Manhattan’s Alphabet City might have appeared, back in the neighborhood’s pre-affluent era in the 80s and 90s, like poorly cast extras on the set of The Warriors. A veritable ghost town, Alphabet City, referred back then as “the wild wild west,” was a place where drug dealers defiantly engaged in public sales, boarded up buildings were converted into crack sanctuaries and echoes of crowing roosters and growling pitbulls were the daily soundtrack.